Jostling for attention this holiday season will be racing simulations Project Cars 2, Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport, with Need for Speed: Payback drawing plenty of comparisons to the Fast & Furious format of camaraderie and high-velocity crime.
Project CARS 2 From Sept 22 For PS4, XBO, WinPC An intensely dedicated racing simulation spanning five disciplines – open-wheel, GT, prototypes, rally cross, touring cars – with over 180 car marques involved and 60 tracks to conquer, Project Cars 2 challenges Gran Turismo Sport and Forza Motorsport 7 for this year's genre crown, and isn't beholden to PlayStation or Xbox platforms.
Forza Motorsport 7 From Oct 3 For Xbox One, Windows 10 A flagship title for the upgraded Xbox One X console which launches a month later on November 7, boasting upwards of 700 cars and 30 tracks, plus player-created drivers and the introduction of weather that changes over the course of a race. As with Forza Horizon 3, purchasing on Xbox One or Windows 10 grants access to the game on the other platform as well.
Gran Turismo Sport From Oct 17 For PlayStation 4 and PSVR A relatively pared-down, competition-focused entry to the notoriously extravagant racing franchise still boasts over 170 cars and 19 tracks. Four years after the console's release, this is the flagship franchise's first PS4 title after 2013's Gran Turismo 6 remained a PS3 exclusive.
Need for Speed: Payback From Nov 10 For PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows PC Where GT Sport, Project Cars 2 and Forza 7 look to simulate motor racing, NfS: Payback is firmly within the arcade tradition, complete with turbo boosts and outrageous police chases, and its story mode leans in on similarities to cinema's blockbuster Fast & Furious franchise. — AFP Relaxnews
Read more at http://www.thestar.com.my/tech/games/2017/09/21/holiday-2017-preview-four-driving-games-for-september-to-november/#Co1SMlQRij8TqLdU.99
Top eSports players traded digital blows at a show in Tokyo on Sept 21 as laggard Japan moves to up its game in the booming spectator draw now worth billions of dollars annually.
Scantily clad women hawking games and virtual reality operators will also compete for the attention of some 250,000 mostly male visitors expected to turn up at the four-day Tokyo Game Show, which kicked off on Sept 21.
But eSports – multiplayer computer games played in front of spectators – took centre stage for the first time at the annual event, as the best of the best faced off in games like Street Fighter V and on virtual battlegrounds.
They may not have household names like Ronaldo or Beckham quite yet, but eSport champions are winning superstar status these days with hundreds of millions of people around the world jumping into the action.
Top players can make millions in prize money alone from tournaments played at packed stadiums in front of up to 50,000 spectators.
They'll be a full medal sport at the 2022 Asian Games in China, while the newly minted Asian eSports Federation president Kenneth Fok is shooting for a spot at the Olympics.
Despite their soaring popularity in North America and parts of Asia, eSports are only now taking off in Japan, home to videogame heavyweights Sony and Nintendo.
Operating restrictions on public gaming and prize money limits have held back growth in the videogame-crazy nation, but top billing at the Tokyo show could punt eSports to the next level, industry insiders said.
“I hope Japanese people will eventually see that winning prize money and making a living out of this as a pro is just as great as being a tennis player like (Kei) Nishikori or other professionals,” said Taichi Shibuki, chairman of game company JPPVR.
“Not many people here even know the word eSports. But this (show) could drastically change things.”
Unlike traditional separations for gender and physical disabilities, eSports can be played under “equal conditions”, he added.
“It doesn't matter if you are a man, a woman, young or old, or if you're physically disabled,” Shibuki said.
“It's a field where everyone can compete with an equal shot.”
The Tokyo show will host more than 600 exhibitors with everything from virtual romance and digital puzzles to shoot-em-up games and role-playing adventures on offer. — AFP
Fast-forward to today: Beam has been renamed Mixer, and Microsoft has integrated the service into Xbox One and Windows 10, with Salsamendi continuing to lead the product team. Mixer seeks to differentiate itself with features including low-latency streaming, the ability for up to four broadcasters to stream to a shared chat experience, and ways for viewers to interact with games as they’re streamed.
Another advantage is Mixer’s close ties with Microsoft’s PC and video-game platforms. The Xbox One and Windows integration has resulted in “crazy awesome growth,” Salsamendi said during a talk last week at the Casual Connect gaming conference in Seattle.
However, Salsamendi said, what’s most important to Mixer isn’t user growth but maintaining the focus on the “very community-oriented experience” that led to the success of the service in the first place.
So how does he view Mixer’s competition with Twitch? GeekWire asked Salsamendi that question during the audience Q&A at the event. Continue reading for his thoughts on that topic, where Mixer is headed next, the potential for eSports, the technical infrastructure needed to support sub-second streaming, and other comments from the Casual Connect session.
How he views the competition with Twitch: “My perspective is a little bit unique in that I started on Twitch. I think it’s really important to respect the communities that are there, and the platform that they’re building. But ultimately I want Mixer to be the best place to broadcast your content regardless of what you’re streaming, and I think we’re doing a good job of that, and we’re continuing to see growth through it.”
“In terms of our content acquisition strategy, being very respectful and cognizant of the communities that are being built there is very important, so we’re doing a lot with natural and viral growth, and the product speaks for itself in that regard. We get tons of huge broadcasters on board just because they like the product. I’m excited to see more. Definitely keep an eye out for more people coming over. I don’t personally think of it as much about competition, but in reality it sort of is. I think that our North Star is always going to be those interactive broadcasters, and continuing to build features for them and socialize what we’re doing.
Mixer’s growth and focus: “From the very beginning, it hasn’t really been much about the numbers. More so about the communities that we’re building. What we’ve been doing with the Xbox integration, with the Windows 10 integration, we’ve seen crazy awesome growth. If you look at the platform if you’re a user, I think that’s something that’s super exciting for you. But really it’s all about continuing to help foster that very community-oriented experience even, I guess the word might be in spite of the growth, because it can be hard, as communities grow, to keep things feeling connected, keep people feeling united around this goal of making streaming interactive.”
“That’s really how we focus. We’re doing things around chat moderation. We’re doing things around the interactive platform, getting more games on board, working with broadcasters directly to help be the focal point to look to as to the kinds of communities that we want to build. Those partner broadcasters, we work really closely with, helping them ward off trolls, helping them build the kinds of streaming experiences that they want to see, and so those are things that are big focuses for us.”
What’s next for Mixer: “I want to continue to grow, focusing on those communities. My vision really involves us scaling the way that we accept feedback, scaling the way that we develop product such that, with all these new awesome Mixer Create apps, with all the new Xbox stuff we’re working on, we still maintain that North Star of broadcasters.”
“I think that’s a really important thing, and it’s not something where you can just sit back and say, ‘Oh, we’re doing it.’ You actually have to go and make a concerted effort to do it. You have to build tools. You have to bake it into your development process. And you have to do things differently in an effort to cater to those users from the start. So that’s something I’m really excited about scaling.”
“From a product perspective, you’re going to see more interactive games. That’s the most obvious thing. As game developers, that’s a little bit of a longer lead there, but you’re going to start seeing more and more games supporting this stream-first functionality. We’re at the forefront of that, and we’re going to continue to be. Those are ways that I’m excited to see it expand.”
On the potential of eSports: I think eSports is cool. We’re still really, really early on. One of the things I’m particularly excited about, if you look at traditional sports, since they’re built historically primarily via cable TV and set-top boxes, there’s not as much opportunity to get in there and get statistics and actually be a part of that kind of gameplay. I think that, as eSports continues to evolve you’re going to see a lot more viewers becoming fundamental part of the experience. Not just watching but actually participating in the eSports, being able to drill down and see player statistics, the ones that you want to see and not just the ones that they’re showing, and actually get better at the game yourself through those things. I think that’s going to be one unique aspect of eSports, because it’s delivered over the Internet and all the challenges but also the possibilities that that entails.
On the infrastructure needed to support sub-second streaming: “We were very lucky early on … because we had existing points of presence in something like 24 different data centers all over the world. Having the data centers is one thing. The interesting thing about what we do is really all about the underlying transports that are used to deliver video, the recovery mechanisms we use when there are network faults, and then the way that we redistribute traffic between our ingest systems and the distribution systems to actually serve that traffic to the viewers.”
“That whole stack is almost completely in-house, almost completely proprietary, which is something that we’re really proud of building. We’re the first company, as far as I’m aware, to do low-latency, large-scale streaming. If you look at what we did with E3, we had 200,000 concurrent people watching E3 in 4K — not 200,000 in 4K, but we were offering it in 4K — and that pipeline held up really well. Of all things, the chat was actually one thing that actually had a little bit of trouble with that scale.”
“But those aren’t fundamental problems, those are things that we’ve worked through, and we’re always iterating on that. It’s all about just continuing to work through trial and error. It’s something that is very new. We use a technology called WebRTC to do video delivery in the browsers, which is a very, very new technology. It hasn’t even been fully standardized yet. But it does exist in most browsers, and there’s libraries to do it on mobile for example.”
“So we’ve definitely been pioneers in that community, and we help wherever we can to help foster that. And it’s been a really exciting journey for us, going from my personal background, I didn’t know much if anything in video streaming and I think that’s actually a blessing in disguise, because it means that you can start fresh, and you can look at ways that you can improve the systems fundamentally because you’re naive to everything else that everybody else has been doing. It’s worked well for us. I have an awesome team. Stefan (Slivinski), who’s our principal video engineer on the FTL (Faster Than Light streaming) side, does an awesome job at what he does, and we’ve got a great team with him that continues to integrate that and more technologies, more browsers, and get it to more people.”
“The great thing is we use H.264 for our video delivery, which has hardware acceleration for both playback and encode pretty much everywhere. So we’re using the hardware encoders on devices for things like Mixer Create. We’re using the hardware decoders wherever they’re available — just pretty much everywhere. It doesn’t use materially more battery life or bandwidth than other platforms, which is really great. The underlying compression and such is the same as what’s being used. It’s more so about the transport and the way we deliver the video that makes it
A raft of upcoming releases were announced during PlayStation's presentation at the 2017 Tokyo Game Show, including Left Alive, a futuristic shooter from a trio of veteran developers, and Neko Atsume, a virtual reality experience based on a popular app about caring for friendly neighbourhood cats.
Since iconic Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima left long-term publisher Konami in 2015, fans have been looking forward to discovering what's next from the franchise director.
His next project, the enigmatic Death Stranding, sees him reunite with actor Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead) and film producer Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim) from cancelled horror project Silent Hills but, though it is a high-profile PlayStation 4 exclusive, the new title did not surface during Sony's Sept 19 PlayStation media briefing at the 2017 Tokyo Game Show.
Instead, it was another Metal Gear Solid luminary whose name was dropped during the presentation: famed illustrator and art director Yoki Shinkawa, whose style has been associated with the series since its 1998 debut, and whose pen has been behind its cover art more often than not.
He's in as character designer on Left Alive, a sci-fi shooter that can also boast Xenoblade Chronicles X mechanical designer Takayuki Yanase and Armored Core franchise producer Toshifumi Nabeshima.
Given the career histories of its leads, the teaser trailer's closing shot of military transport helicopters hovering over a ravaged metropolis seems indicative of what's to come.
By contrast, Neko Atsume offers the prospect of a welcoming backyard for adorable neighborhood fluffballs to play, eat, and sleep in.
The cat sim became something of a sensation when it released as a free-to-play Android and iOS game in 2014, enthusiastic fans supplying download and translation guides for those too eager to wait a year for the Japanese game's English language edition.
Such was its popularity that a live-action film was even released in April 2017.
And while glossy action games have tended to be at the forefront of Sony's push for more widespread adoption of its PlayStation VR kit – Gran Turismo Sport, Rez: Infinite, Farpoint – there's plenty of room for more sedate, strangely enthralling fare.
Neko Atsume VR has been announced for a 2018 release in Japan.
Among other highlights from the TGS showcase, timeless PlayStation 2 classic Shadow Of The Colossus is moving closer to a 2018 PlayStation 4 re-release, as demonstrated by a new trailer, Monster Hunter: World is destined for a Jan 26 launch on PS4 (as well as Xbox One) and the year 2000's treasured Final Fantasy IX was announced for immediate launch on PS4 and the handheld PlayStation Vita. — AFP Relaxnews
Minecraft is getting even more interactive thanks to a new tool from Mixer.
The Microsoft-owned streaming platform today announced new features that let people watching Minecraft streams interact with the gameplay in real-time.
Minecraft streamers can add “Mixer interactivity” to their game and turn any Minecraft command into an interactive button that viewers can use to change the given game. Streamers can set parameters for how much interaction is enabled.
The new feature is available today in the Minecraft beta (1.2.5) and Windows 10, with Xbox compatibility arriving Tuesday. iOS users will get access once the beta version is cleaned up.
Mixer also announced today that the Minecraft 1.2.5 beta now lets streamers broadcast directly from inside a Minecraft game via Mixer; iOS users will get this capability in the final release.
The acquisitions are part of Microsoft’s strategy to accelerate its gaming business across the company. In a company-wide memo sent in June, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlined five core customer solution areas that he wants employees to prioritize. They include modern workplace; business applications; applications and infrastructure; data and AI; and gaming.
Microsoft’s acquisition of Mixer, originally called Beam, gave Microsoft a rival to YouTube Gaming and Amazon’s Twitch, letting users livestream and watch games and other content. Mixer seeks to differentiate itself with features including low-latency streaming, the ability for up to four broadcasters to stream to a shared chat experience, and ways for viewers to interact with games as they’re streamed.
Another advantage is Mixer’s close ties with Microsoft’s PC and video-game platforms, which is evident from today’s Minecraft announcement.
Minecraft was released digitally for New Nintendo 3DS as a surprise announcement during last month's Nintendo Direct. The New 3DS version of Mojang's popular sandbox game features the Survival and Creative modes, as well as five skin packs, two new texture packs, and more.
Players can use the touch screen to view the map, access their inventory, and craft various items. Additionally, the New 3DS version gives players the option of controlling the game with either touch or traditional button controls.
